


Not Quite a Ghost

by irenesadler



Series: The Partisan: or the Art of Making War in Detachment [4]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Assassination Plot(s), Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Ethics, Extreme Competence, F/F, Failed Politics, Fix-It, Friendship, Humor, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, It rains a lot in Velen, Minor Character(s), Minor Spoilers, Period Grammar, Romance, Sarcasm, Storytime, Women in the Military, pride month special
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:14:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24950647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irenesadler/pseuds/irenesadler
Summary: or, "A Cautionary tale of Politicks and their Inevitable Results" by Ves, Temerian Partisan
Relationships: Ves/Tamara Strenger
Series: The Partisan: or the Art of Making War in Detachment [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1304999
Comments: 21
Kudos: 9





	1. In which I attend a Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> Tamara has the least satisfying storyline. Also, Witcher 3 just totally dropped a main antagonist from Witcher 2. This clears up both of these issues at once.  
> Contains some minor spoilers for things that might or might not happen in Witcher 3 depending on what you do in the Bloody Baron questline.  
> The characters Cozent and Idler were introduced in the previous fic in this series. 
> 
> TW: Referenced/mentioned rape (as one would find in-canon).

It happened one day that I passed through the village of Midcopse, and it happened that an acquaintance of mine, a woman who were married to a joiner, stopped me on my way and told me a tale of woe. I listened to it as I always did and then said I’d do what I could about it, which often weren’t much, but I found that the people around seemed to want to hear _something_ from the last ragged remains of the Temerian army. She knew how things were as well as I did or better, though, and so she didn’t keep me long. After, I went on my way, arrived at the dank caves of the hideout, and immediately looked for the Commander.

He was in a meeting with the Redanian spy Sigismund Dijkstra. I kept myself out of it, but he could see me lurking along the edges of the collection of tables and paperwork he called an office. Something about my expression must’ve made him think what I had to say was important; he stopped listening to Dijkstra talk and I passed along the report I’d been away to collect in the first place. Dijkstra ran to an annoyed halt, noticing this. Roche opened the message and read it, scowling. I knew very well what he was reading, and so I weren’t surprised by what he had to say about it:

“Damn,” he said. “The Bloody Baron’s dead.”

“Dead?” The Redanian made the word sound like a personal insult. He glanced my way suspiciously.

“Hung himself, before we could get around to killing him ourselves. Waste of a lot of planning.”

Roche tossed the message onto a growing stack of similar-looking papers.

“Well,” Dijkstra said, “Less work for us. Or, for you, anyway. What’s next on the docket?”

A pause. I stayed where I was, despite receiving no invitation to listen in, watching and waiting. Roche sat back down in the chair he’d been occupying when I arrived and pretended not to see me.

“Escalation,” he said. “After dealing with Strenger, we planned to capitalize on the resulting anarchy by moving up the chain of command.” 

“Who’d you have in mind?”

“Havart von Moehon.”

Dijkstra had been appearing thoughtful; he switched to a startled stare for a moment before resuming his typical surly glare.

“The governor of Temeria? The Field Marshal? You aren’t moving up the chain, you’re jumping off a fucking cliff.”

Silence. Roche smiled coldly. Dijkstra glared for a moment and apparently decided to expand further on his theme.

“I don’t think your men are experienced enough to pull off something like that, frankly,” he said. “And neither do you, I’d say. Von Moehon isn’t some rouge warlord with a drinking problem. It’d take more than a pitfall trap and a dark night to knock him off.”

Roche’s smile turned dangerous; he glanced at me and back at the spy. For a moment I wondered if maybe he were going to shift his sights onto a new and closer target, but all he did was say, “No need for my _men._ Ves has already been there and done that.”

All eyes turned toward me: Roche’s, Dijkstra’s, and a passing commando’s. Dijkstra scoffed at my blank stare.

“What, you’re gonna tell me the rumors are false and _she’s_ the one who _really_ axed King Henselt?”

Dijkstra didn’t much like me and this turn of events weren’t looking like they were about to change his mind. Roche knew this perfectly well and his cold smile stayed on; he shook his head and said, “Not Henselt. Shilard Fitz-Oesterlen.”

“The Nilgaardian Ambassador? _That’s_ what happened to him?”

I stood for another few breaths until Roche nodded at me to explain and so I did, in a somewhat falsely confident tone at first:

“Well,” I said, “It were like this..”

\----

The battle at Dol Blathana had, well, it’d gone better than it should’ve but that weren’t saying much. Three days of fighting and three days of killing went by, and late in the night of the third day or maybe early in the morning of the fourth the black ones tore at our Temerian lines like wolves among the cattle. Come dawn, they were through, and so were we.

I had gotten separated from Roche at some point in the night, and so I wandered the battlefield alone. Or wasteland was more apt. Snow drifted from a cold gray sky, bodies and scraps lay scattered among the rocks and destroyed frozen earth, and crows and dogs - both the animal and human varieties – picked through it all. Among them I passed wearily, still holding my sword and wondering where I was. And where everyone else that was alive was, I suppose; at the time it looked a lot like maybe I were the last remaining member of what had once been Temeria’s 2nd Army.

I was not, however, the only living thing that ranged the landscape. I knew in the back of my mind that the scavengers and brigands would take notice of me in time. When they did, they came in a group: a handful of feverish wastrels armed with stolen weapons and led by a ragged creature with only one eye.

“You’re a long way from home, girl,” this one announced. His little band arranged themselves in a circle around so as to prevent my escape. I sighed wearily at them. Well, first I sort of laughed, then sighed.

“Not how I planned on dying,” I said, “After all this shit.” 

“You can always surrender,” one of the band said, with a leer. I didn’t bother responding to that, just raised my sword and got ready to join the rest of Temeria in the dirt. Or so I thought.

“This ain’t a fair fight,” a new voice declared from within the icy fog beyond the backs of the scavengers. I caught a glimpse of a giant shape in blue afore the scavengers attacked. The fight was short, even though I only killed one and the mystery stranger another; the one I dispatched was the leader and surprise scattered the others. They vanished back to whence they’d come rather than risk their own lives further. After that, I stood among the field’s newest corpses and stared at my mysterious new ally, sword raised to defend myself.

Seemed, though, there’d be no need. He was a towering bearlike man with a bandage wrapped around most of his head and face; he considered me and then raised a casual knuckle to his forehead in something like a salute.

“Blue Stripes, is it?” he said to me.

“What’s left of ‘em,” was my reply. He dropped the axe he carried onto the ground abruptly, swayed once, back and forth. I noticed blood soaking through the bandage on the left side of his face and managed to scramble the few feet separating us in time to keep him from slamming his head into a rock as he fainted dead away.

When he returned to the mortal world, I was sitting next to him, still holding my sword, as I weren’t sure what else to do. He blinked up at me.

“This is no time for a nap,” I told him. I’d ripped a long black strip of cloth from a Nilfgaardian banner that had been left on the ground nearby and wound it tight around his skull and the bloody bandage; this had stopped him from leaking everywhere, but I didn’t have to be a medic to figure that he didn’t have a entire week to get by on just that. He sat up and stared at me hazily.

“Nilfs chopped my ear off,” he explained. I’d figured this out already; I cast a wary eye out at the gathering fog.

“That’s all they’re getting off you,” I said. “We need to get moving.”

He didn’t argue; somehow I managed to drag him up off the ground and we set off across the graveyard together. 

“Name’s Cozent Everart,” he told me. “Sergeant. Third Infantry. The Alaunts.”

“Ves,” I said to him, and didn’t add more than that. He refrained from asking further.

Not to say that he refrained from speaking; we wandered for hours, and he kept up a steady commentary the entire time. The world got grayer and darker and more snow fell in that wasted land. We passed through it, me in mostly silence and him filled with incoherent chatter. I began to worry he was growing feverish, but there wasn’t much I could do about it if he was. Eventually, we had to stop and rest, in shelter of a ruined siege wagon. I stared out at the snow and listened to Cozent talk on.

“..my old captain used to give us a tale or two when in his cups about the Battle of Brenna, which he fought in, and to hark to him, you’da thought that it were hell on earth, almost like this, but this ain’t no way hell as it’s far too fuckin’ cold.”

“Hush,” I said, eyes on a moving thing out in the haze. Cozent quit his rambling and set up, looking toward the same spot. Presently, a line of troops in shining black armor crossed a dozen yards from our position, looking like they’d marched right off the parade ground. We shrank down, hidden by the wagon and by our filthy uniforms until they passed from sight and hearing.

“Reckon we might be going the wrong way,” Cozent said, eyeing me. I had come to a similar conclusion; I nodded slowly.

“We must be behind their lines, or near enough.”

“So what now?”

He blinked back me blankly when I looked his way. Clearly he’d decided, for some reason, that I were his hope of surviving the hellscape we found ourselves in. I didn’t ask what he was thinking of because I was pretty sure he wasn’t. I thought to myself it’d be easiest to keep on without him. It were a brief idea only; I knew I couldn’t abandon him there under the wagon.

“We’ll wait ‘till night falls and go from there,” I said. He didn’t argue. I knew he wouldn’t.

By night, the snow turned to a seeping rain. We went out into a darkness that had only the distant, blood-red glow of campfires among the hillsides to break it up. I chose a direction that seemed as though it would take us away from the majority of these. At some point we stumbled upon a road and stopped. I said as I felt we should follow it for a while, toward the barely-visible looming shape of Mount Carbon, which I thought was northward. Cozent told me it were all the same to him.

He was silent as we walked, as if the dark put a stop on his former loquaciousness. At first I felt this were a good thing, but as the miles and hours passed under our feet I almost wished for more of his rambling war stories and philosophies. The night slowly sunk into a fever dream of cold rain and exhaustion. So things continued until we were both too weary to keep stumbling along.

The road had been rising in elevation for some time. We’d left the red campfire glow behind; they lit the horizon behind us in their thousands. Ahead of us was utter darkness. As I noticed this, I stopped, quite suddenly. Cozent fetched up next to me like a dog hitting the end of its leash.

“Where are we?” He asked. I didn’t know.

“Think we’re out of the battlefield,” I told him. “Thought as we ought to take a rest, until dawn.”

So we did, within a rocky outcropping that overhung the road and hid a cave some way into the darkness. I found the place by luck more than woodcraft even tho’ Cozent said, admiring, “You’re as good as them Squirrels, lady.” I only smiled at him humorlessly, knowing he couldn’t see me, and sat looking out at the faraway lights of the conquering army.

I ain’t sure whether I slept or not; dawn found me still staring wideyed into the world outside the cave, but a noise from beyond it jerked me into a sudden awareness. I blinked twice and became aware that we were some twenty yards above the road and a file of men were creeping along it in the direction we’d been going. Most were afoot and dressed in black armor and cloaks against the sleet, but one, one was mounted, slightly hunched over in the saddle, and the world became crystal clear as I recognized the twisted face it wore. I didn’t think about it, just reached over, picked up my crossbow from where I’d set it down, checked to ensure the string were dry, and sighted along the second-to-last bolt I had as the line of Nilfs marched along by. As my target passed, I breathed out, settled my shoulders, and squeezed the trigger.

Figure the ambassador didn’t know what hit him. I watched him tumble off his horse, my bolt fixed firmly just under his chin through his throat and out the back of his neck, and then pushed myself out of the prone position I’d adopted for the shot. When I looked at Cozent, he was wide-eyed.

“Never seen anything like it,” he told me. I shrugged at him. He added something about the Blue Stripes, but I didn’t listen to it; instead I cast a look toward the chaos that was unfolding on the road not that far off and said, “We should go.”

Which we did. Ten hours or nearabout later, we found yet another straggling line of soldiers, but this time they were Temerian and driving them along, by some twist of fate, was Vernon Roche.

\------

“And that, gentlemen, were that,” I finished, at less length then given here. The handful of looky-loos who had gathered in the background found other places to be. Dijkstra stared at me. Roche just smiled in my general direction, almost fondly, I thought.

“A likely story,” the Redanian finally said, after digesting my tale.

“It’s all true,” I replied, having expected this reaction. “Every word.” 

“We happen to have Cozent Everart in residence,” Roche added, full of false mildness. “Feel free to ask him.”

Dijkstra didn’t appear to want to. “Sounds like just a lucky accident to me,” he argued. I finally scowled, feeling as I’d had enough of his needling. Obviously I’d heard such things before, generally more often than not. That didn’t mean, however, that I enjoyed the constant doubts.

“ _Luck_ weren’t what pulled the trigger on that shot,” I snapped, which earned me no less displeasure. Not from the Commander; he took up the subject without further argument brokered but with a second of his rare tolerant smiles toward me.

“ _And,_ ” he said, “Neither would it in the case of von Moehon. An ambush, out in the woods; these things can always look like _accidents_ to an _outsider_ if we wish them to.”

“Explosives?” Dijkstra ignored the sarcasm, seemingly warming to the subject when my direct involvement wasn’t in the discussion. Roche shook his head and glanced my way.

“Hidden wires,” I suggested. “Stretched across a road on a dark night at head height.”

It was a trick I’d used more than a few times; the Squirrels had enjoyed some success with it and the first time I’d seen it done I had been about seventeen.

“ _Which_ road?” asked Dijkstra, and added, “Anyway, this is all academic. You know as well as I do that you can’t kill a Nilfgaardian Field Marshal just now, unless we’re going to throw the entirety of Thaler’s negotiations out the window. I, at least, am not willing to do that.”

He of course referred to the deal he and Roche were cutting with the Nilf Emperor, the details of which I was not supposed to be privy to but knew anyway. Roche seemed to have no response to this completely reasonable argument; nevertheless, when Dijkstra left sometime later he didn’t see fit to tell _me_ to follow suit. Or, at least, he didn’t indicate that I shouldn’t stick around, so I detached myself from leaning against the wall of the cave and instead perched on the edge of a table and helped myself to a drink. I could tell he was deep in thought, so I didn’t interrupt. In time, he stirred and emptied the remains of the bottle of wine that had been on the table into his own cup.

“Wires across the road, you’re thinking?” he said to me. I shrugged.

“Well, I _was._ ”

Roche nodded a few times.

“Well,” he continued, “Of course Dijkstra’s –“ here he sighed wearily “ – Dijkstra’s right. We’re in too deep to go knocking off Field Marshals now.”

I nodded.

“Pity about the Baron. Treaty or not, I would’ve killed _him_. There’s no place in Temeria for collaborators,” he added. I cleared my throat indicatively, as I had more to say on this matter. Not that I had any personal interest in the Baron’s loyalties either way, but I _did_ have yet to relate what I had been told by the woman who’d spoken to me that afternoon, in the village square of Midcopse. It just so happened the information was relevant to our discussion.

“There’s that sergeant of his,” I noted. “Ardan. No, Ardal. He’s in charge now, I hear. That’s not all I hear about him, either. I think it might be that some of the folks ‘round here wouldn’t mind too much if something happened to him. Might even thank us for it. Or,” I finished, with a smile, “So I hear.”

“Oh?”

I then related the details of what I’d been told; a garish anecdote wherin the sister and niece of the woman from Midcopse had the entirety of their stores and livestock carried off and were raped by way of gratitude, by this same Ardal and his gang, while all the time their menfolk were at the nearby garrison performing a labor quota.

It must be said that this sort of thing wasn’t in any way unusual. This wasn’t the first time Roche had heard such a story nor the first time that I had told it. Thankfully, this time, _I_ was not the subject, though I had been before more than once. I suppose maybe that was why he listened to it patiently. He knew why I tended to take such matters to heart, no matter how many times I encountered them. The Commander sat through as he always did and when I was done studied me cautiously for a moment. I drained my cup. He pushed his own toward me.

“Well,” says he, “Suppose we were to take care of this sergeant and his gang. Who’s to say someone as bad or worse doesn’t move into his place?”

“Could be,” I replied, grudgingly. “But maybe not. If so, I guess we could kill them, too.”

“What if, instead of some home-grown shitlord, a Nilfgaardian or Redanian installs themselves in Crow’s Perch?”

I shrugged this off. I drank Roche’s drink.

“Don’t see how any of these reasons wouldn’t have come up from killing Strenger, but we were still gonna do that.”

“Strenger had an heir at the time,” Roche pointed out. “Who has since vanished without a trace. Apparently.”

My expression, I’m pleased to say, didn’t falter. It so happened that the vanished heir was not dead or even missing; I knew very well where she was, and so did Roche, but we hadn’t told anyone else. I had run into the heir of Crow’s Perch not long after we came to Velen, one day when I had been headed one way down an empty road and she’d been going the opposite direction. We’d stayed in touch. Her current whereabouts were a secret mostly because she’d asked me to keep them so, and Roche, who didn’t count as a person as far as keeping secrets were concerned, had seen no tactical value in revealing them to anyone else. He eyeballed me for a long moment, sighed, and stood up.

“Look,” he said, “Gods know I can’t keep you from doing whatever it is you decide you’re going to do. Well, suppose I could have you confined, but..”

I raised an eyebrow. We both knew no man or lockup would hold me for long.

“..just, some things to think about, on your latest crusade,” he finished, a little wearily.

I _had_ thought about them. I thought about them for about five whole minutes more, after he left, and then got to work.


	2. Oxenfurt, by night

Other than Vernon Roche, there was about two men in the entire world that I trusted in any way. One was Cozent Everart, who had followed me off the battlefield and through more unpleasantness than either of us liked to remember afterward. The other was named Idler Greene, a man of unshakeable loyalty and melancholic temper; I was somewhat more fond of him than I cared to admit. The former of these had watch all evening, so I went looking for the latter.

I found him turning the pages of a book, although I was fairly sure he couldn’t read. Something about the look on my face made him turn gloomier than usual. I smiled brightly at him, to see if it would make a difference, which sometimes worked but this time did not.

“I’ve a mind to visit Oxenfurt tonight,” I said to him. He blinked up at me.

“Why?” 

This was a new question, from him. I stared at him briefly, for once out of sorts.

“Why?” he repeated, after a long moment. 

Why I needed him was obvious enough. Nobody in their right mind would try sneaking out to the city alone, at night. That I needed him to watch my back could go unsaid. I suspected this was not really what he meant. Truthfully, I didn’t really have to tell him anything; I could have said it were none of his business, and as I outranked him he would have followed along anyway. I did not do this. Instead, I explained most of my chat with Roche, leaving out as how he’d hinted that I shouldn’t be doing what I was doing at all, and alluded to there being someone of use in Oxenfurt to carry out what I made sound like were some delicate affairs. Idler chewed this over, and then nodded.

“Alright,” he said.

So we set out, as the afternoon grew late, more or less in silence. I considered what might be into him as we went and decided that, though he usually didn’t ask too many questions, it was because some things had changed between us recently. For instance, I had saved his life. Also, I’d refused a vague offer of marrying him in the future. These things, perhaps, might have jumbled his head a little. I didn’t comment on it.

Sunset blazed orange in our eyes as we arrived at the riverbank, just beyond the bridges leading to the city. There was no boat awaiting us, but we stood there with only one knowing glance between us until a certain fishing boat crossed under the bridge and moved slowly along the water in the current. Idler waved an arm at it for a while, until the skipper, who we both knew well, apparently spotted him and turned the craft our way.

“Always ready to do my bit,” the ancient operator of the vessel told us yet again, as we boarded. “Fought at Brenna, myself.”

Or, well, shouted at us. He continued doing this as we drifted back into the current and toward the general direction of the Oxenfurt docks; I sat and smiled politely, listening to the same things he told us every time our paths crossed. Idler, hunched over in a seat in the bows, winked confidentially at me in the last of the daylight. I bore the sailor’s war stories all the way to the docks, where I rapidly abandoned ship under the flickering of lightning as a storm blew in much faster than we had done. Thunder drowned out most of our ferryman’s final thoughts, aside from a shouted _Hail Temeria_ as the boat drifted out of dock and regained the current. I made a somewhat halfhearted salute toward it in response.

“Hail,” Idler mumbled. I smirked and then realized it was a warning, not a joke. We shrank back into the cover of an overhang by the wall during a brief period where chips of ice fell from the sky, and then, under the convenient cover of a veritable torrent of rain, made our way along the streets to a certain house that I knew. Were no guards outside it, in the weather; I stopped, knocked to a pre-determined pattern, and then me and Idler parted ways without a word. He vanished into the darkness, but I knew he were just across the way. I then walked ten yards to where a door blocked the mouth of an alley. Behind me, the house door opened; someone said, in a thick accent, “Damn kids again,” and closed it.

Felt like I was waiting by the alley a while, but in time the little door to the alley cracked and a woman’s voice quietly said my name through it. I allowed it was me and was let into the darkness within. There was a roof over the alley, which blocked out the downpour. The door was again closed and locked and a lamp flickered a few times before the person holding it got it to light up. In the glow I perceived the pale features of the woman I’d come to see.

“Ves,” she said again, voice just barely shaky.

“Tamara,” I replied, whereupon she wrapped my drenched form in a tight embrace and kissed me. I kissed her in return.

In time, we got around to talking. I sat on low stair in front of what was probably the back door of the house. Tamara leaned against the brick wall of the building opposite. At first the conversation just wandered through the last few weeks of our lives since we’d last had an excuse to see each other, but in time we arrived at the present. I summoned my most sympathetic tone of voice.

“Heard some news about your father,” I announced. “That he died.”

“I know,” A flicker of rage crossed Tamara’s face. The expression suited her, made her eyes bright in the low flickering of the lamp. “I’m not sorry.”

I’d figured on that being the case, as I’d heard my share of stories about her parents. This did not stop me from wondering briefly how I might have felt in her place, had I a father to be sorry over. I wasn’t sure, and I did not, so I just nodded to show I was listening.

“He was a bastard,” Tamara added, sounding a little deflated. She _was_ sorry, I noticed with interest; she looked away from me and wiped a hand across her eyes. I nodded again.

“What will you do now?” I asked her. My tone sounded casual to my ears. Unluckily, something was off about it, or, like Roche, she had somehow learned to divine when I was trying to play it cool. Suspicion joined the scowl on her face. Both then cleared.

“This is my life now,” she told me. She smiled. “I’m a witch hunter. I serve – “

“ – the Eternal Fire,” I finished for her. “Yeah. But, what if you, uh, did something else?”

Tamara frowned suspiciously at me again.

“Like _what?_ ”

“What I like about you, is you don’t try to be subtle,” I said in response to her waspy tone. 

_“Ves,”_ she replied, trying to make it sound like a warning. I grinned once in a disarming way and then launched into a recitation of the story I’d told earlier that day. Not the one where I killed Shilard Fitz-whatever. The other one. Her face got slightly ill-looking as I got to the end of my tale of troubles for the second time that day. I felt a little bad for having to tell it to her. Tamara was not a child, nor were she divorced from the harsh realities of life, but I doubted anyone had often put ‘em to her so directly. I didn’t have many years on her, but in some ways, I was much, much older than she was. Least I felt that way looking at her face.

“Why – why did you tell me about this?” She finally asked.

“Because me and, uh, my associates, have been contemplating the merits of dealing with your dad’s old sergeant,” I said. “Permanently.”

“Good. He’s a swine. They all are, but he’s the worst of them.”

“Only we’re concerned who might step into his place after he’s gone.”

Tamara was picking up what I was laying down. She smiled slightly at me and shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I won’t.”

I’d expected her to say this; I had a list in my mind of possible arguments. I found myself combining them all together: a plea for the fates of the helpless creatures that Ardal lived off of, a flattering insistence that no one else was good enough to serve, and even an appeal to Temerian patriotism that I knew she didn’t really feel any more than I did especially. As speeches went, it weren’t too bad; it would have definitely convinced Cozent, and even possibly a well-disposed Roche, but it had no affect at all on Tamara Strenger. She listened to the entire thing and then came and sat down next to me, her shoulder leaning against mine. I could smell her soap and the oil on her armor.

“Ves,” she said to me, “Do you know, yourself, where you’re supposed to be? Where you belong.”

I set my elbow on my knee and propped my chin on my fist, thought it over for about ten seconds, and replied, guarded, “Yes?”

“With the Temerian Resistance,” Tamara prompted.

“Yes,” I said again, although in truth it were really Vernon Roche I belonged with, not any specific cause of his.

“Well, _I_ belong _here_ ,” Tamara declared, laying her head on my shoulder. The rain roared down out in the street. “With the witch hunters. I’m happy, here. I know you understand me.”

I did. But, then, I thought of my contact – _friend –_ in Midcopse, a woman round about the same age as us who had looked at me like I were all she thought she could rely on in the entire world, and, then, likely, not even that. I thought to myself darkly that happiness weren’t everything. There was not much happiness to be had in the lives of anyone beyond the bridges and walls of Oxenfurt. I didn’t figure on magically fixing that, but the least I could do was make their world a little less needlessly cruel.

So, on the way back, I hatched a scheme. I should have guessed something were wrong with it by the downright perturbed look Idler got when I ran my ideas by him. I told myself it was just because he hadn’t known until then who it was I had called on in Oxenfurt. Then, when I told the final version to Roche, he coughed a little on a mouthful of his breakfast. But, in the end, he agreed that it would probably work as designed and told me to go ahead and do it. 

“If this is _really_ what you think is best,” he added, to the end of his permission. This annoyed me somewhat, in part due to how I’d been up most of the night and also because I did not enjoy having my scheme authorized and also cagily second-guessed in the same breath. So, I went on ahead, blind to these warning signs of imminent disaster. Except first I got some sleep and had a decent meal, and then dealt with the various menial details of everyday life in the Temerian camp. By the time I had a spare moment to consider any personal matters it was evening and my mood had cooled somewhat.

I sat playing cards with Idler and Cozent, but my mind were on my own problems and not on the game. After my third mistake, Cozent folded his hand and addressed me:

“What’s the trouble with you tonight? Anyone’d say you got a problem with a wench or something, way you’re acting.” 

Idler and I both glared at him. He bulled on regardless.

“I seen the signs before many a time. Best to get it out in the open. Makes the medicine go down easier.”

Here, Cozent winked at Idler, who regarded him with mild disgust.

“You’re fucking drunk,” he said. “Shut it, won’t you?”

Cozent, I should add, knew, or thought he knew, how it were between me and Idler. As neither of us had seen fit to confirm or deny, and as the real nature of my dealings with Tamara were known only to her and myself, it was, largely, my fault that he was in the dark. But as I had no interest in discussing my personal relationships of any sort with Cozent Everart I decided it was best to distract ‘em both. To this end, I delivered yet another rendition of the ill deeds of Ardal and his band of brigands. Idler had heard most of it already and listened again with a pragmatic stare. Cozent smiled, nodded, and, as I finished with a brief sketch of how I were planning to sort out the issue, declared, “So it _is_ a wench. What’d I say? I can always tell. Listen, here’s what I always do..”

Idler leaned back in his chair so his face was hidden in the shadows. I interrupted Cozent quickly, to avoid unsolicited advice.

“Listen,” I said, “I need some help with these affairs. Someone to watch my back, make sure I don’t get an arrow in it when I least expect, as I don’t doubt Ardal won’t take kindly to my involving myself in this business if he finds out about it. _When_ he finds out. I can get you both off watch for a few days if you will.”

“Just had to ask,” Cozent said, becoming quite serious suddenly. “No need for anything else. Right, Idler?”

A pause. Idler leaned forward, back into the candle light. He looked closely at me and then nodded.


	3. I ignite the Flames of Rebellion

A few days later, we were engaged in posting fliers to nearby notice boards. Or, anyway, Idler and Cozent were, as I was not the most unremarkable of individuals. I had written the fliers myself, copied out as neatly as I could manage:

_Wanted,_ (they read)

_For to enact a Defence against those who’d do us Harm, Man or Beast:_

_Any who’d wish to form a Citizen’s Militia. No experience in Arms needed._

_An Informal Meeting on this Matter to be held this Friday Afternoon, in the Inn at the Crossroads._

_Refreshments to Follow._

I read it this out to Idler and Cozent before they went out. All Idler had said about it, incredulously, was “Refreshments to follow?” Cozent had just shrugged. When they returned, Cozent commented as they’d been watched by a group of what he called _sullen-looking assholes_ which were what I’d expected.

“Which they followed us a while,” Idler said, “But we lost ‘em in the woods when we tired of them.” I nodded in satisfaction.

The day of the meeting came soon enough and we prepared to depart; I wrote a final note, which I folded into a square, scrawled the recipient’s name on the outside, and tucked into my pocket. This done, I had a last word with Roche, who had more or less washed his hands of the whole affair (he said), and we set off into the noonday heat.

The inn was not a far walk, by our standards, but owing to the blazing sun and thick air we were all three very sweaty by the time we arrived. I had expected, due to the climate, that the inn would be in some way crowded, but it weren’t. Nobody were in the street nearby, either; we entered the building’s relatively cooler atmosphere and shared a disconcerted glance. Cozent instantly sauntered to the bar and flopped wearily into a seat.

The owner appeared through a back door. She stood and eyeballed us with little enthusiasm and then said, “You people ain’t welcome here, Ves. What are you thinking of with this meeting bullshit?”

“But we’re paying customers,” I responded, cheerily. Idler cleared his throat, caught my eye, and nodded meaningfully toward something out in the street. I harked to a faint sound of horses arriving and hurried over to where the other woman stood, glaring.

“Here,” I told her, producing a fist-sized sack of metal, “Fifty Novigrad crowns. We’re paying, for whatever happens. We won’t hold your business long. If you would, meantime, have a local lad or whoever you can deliver this note, I’d consider it a personal favor.”

She took the note reluctantly, listening to my hurried explanation of a hollow log at the shore near the Oxenfurt bridge and where to leave it and which sign to place that it was full. The money had smoothed over some of her displeasure, it seemed. Whatever it was, she took both coins and message and vanished the way she’d come in. I could only hope she were as honest as her reputation claimed. There was, however, not much time to worry about it, as whatever Idler had been worrying himself over came crashing in the front door the instant she’d made her escape.

It was probable that they, or some of ‘em, were the ones that had followed Idler and Cozent some days before. They were a collection of armed men, some in various remnants of Temerian military issue, and there was seven of them to our three. If we’d met ‘em out in the road at night, I’d have reckoned they were deserters and any who survived the encounter Roche would have hanged from the nearest tree. As it were, they could only be some of the Bloody Baron’s men that now belonged to Ardal. One had a crossbow, which he used to point me and Idler away from the windows and closer to Cozent. We both kept our hands visible and did what he wanted.

Cozent, for himself, reached across the bar, laid hold of a jug that had been left unattended, and had himself a drink of whatever were in it.

“Heard there was a meeting hereabouts,” the man with the crossbow announced.

“Come to the right place,” replied I. Idler elbowed Cozent; Cozent passed the jug to him. “Who might you gentlemen be?”

“Never you mind, girl. Ardal sent us. See, we brought ‘im one of those messages them two –“ said with a wave of the crossbow at Idler and Cozent “- was putting out in the villages. He found it real interesting and sent us along saying to find who it is that’s trying to rile up the good honest folk hereabout.”

Idler took his drink from the jug and offered it to me; I glanced at it, wrinkled my nose at the stench of bootleg liquor that rose out of the mouth, and shook my head.

“And so, here we are,” Crossbow finished. “And so are you.”

I blinked innocently at him, smiled in a way that could be construed by some men as flirtatious, and said, “Ardal said all that? I didn’t know pigs could talk.”

Crossbow made an amused sort of noise, took a few apparently involuntary steps forward as his bloodshot stare drifted slowly down to my chest, and replied, “The boss is gonna love you, girl. You can kill those other two. _She’s_ coming with us,” he announced. As he reached out to take hold of me, I caught a glimpse of movement out the corner of my left eye; Idler shifted his grip on the earthenware jug he was still holding and used it to lead a swing with what looked like the entirety of his weight behind it. He slammed the thing straight into the side of Crossbow’s head. Both broke instantly, the jug into a dozen thick pieces with an accompanying splatter of the contents and the man’s skull in a way that made blood trickle out of his ears as he fell. For a few breaths nobody moved; most of the thugs looked down at their fallen leader and I glanced sideways at Idler’s quietly displeased face. A fume of alcohol filled the air. Then all hell broke loose.

First, as if by mutual consent, we and the remainder of Ardal’s troops went for our weapons. As we stood into a battle that none of us had many illusions of all three surviving, a third party crashed into the chaos and set at our opponents’ backs. I dodged an axe blow or two from some guy who still had three lilies sewn to the front of his jacket, ducked low and dispatched him in the opening left after he made a third unbalanced swing at my head, and decided to back out of the fray. As the thought crossed my mind, someone fished me out by the back of my jacket; I swung around to face Cozent, who had his own axe in one hand but were standing by watching the scrap, an amused grin all over his face. The fight, such as it was, ended in no time at all. Idler removed his blade from the last of Ardal’s men and backpedaled toward where us two stood by, me still holding my bloody sword. On the other side of the room a gaggle of what looked like farmers armed with hunting equipment and tools stood about over the corpses, eyeing us with the same wariness that we turned on them.

We stood there for a few moments, collecting ourselves. In time, Idler finished catching his breath, took a step over to the collapsed crossbowman, and kicked at the body experimentally.

“Dead,” he announced, in satisfaction.

This acted as an icebreaker of sorts. I found my thoughts and said, to nobody in particular, “Fuck’s all this?”

One of the mystery band detached himself from the others. He were a short, burly, middle-aged man, armed with a pickaxe. His eyes settled on Idler; he strode closer, cleared his throat, and asked, “You in charge?”

Idler shook his head and jabbed his thumb in my direction. The man with the pickaxe raised one incongruous eyebrow but he stepped my way anyway and addressed me:

“Name’s John Bull. This lot’s my neighbors, mostly. We’re here for the meeting?”

Idler and Cozent turned slowly my way. I eyed the pack of farmers and yeomen and sighed to myself.

“Damn,” I said. Cozent laughed quietly.

“What?” asked John Bull, eyes narrowing. I claimed the stool Cozent had lately evacuated and tried to sound appeasing, given that we were yet again outnumbered by armed men. Well, _men_ of a sort – one or two of ‘em were definitely not yet fifteen – and _arms_ of a sort – one had turned up with an ordinary sledgehammer to serve as a weapon.

“We weren’t expecting nobody to show up,” I told them. “Well, _these_ ones” – I nodded at the dead bodies – “we were, but nobody else.”

Fact was, when I’d come up with the plan to stage a peasant uprising and thereby draw out some of Ardal’s troops, or maybe even the man himself, I had figured on the actual _peasants_ being smart enough to have nothing to do with it. I hadn’t expected any of ‘em to be brave or stupid or desperate enough to actually turn up to the meeting I’d advertised. Now I wasn’t sure what to do with them, but I figured that a wrong step might put us in the same place as the soldiers they’d rescued us from. Only I had no expectation of a second lucky rescue to come through that door to save our necks.

“Looked to me as if you three was headed for a noose in Crow’s Perch,” Bull remarked. “If you were lucky enough to even get there.”

Idler suddenly glanced over, met my eyes, and looked guiltily at the ceiling. In fact, the plan _had_ been for us three wind up exactly how we’d been – at least up until his inexplicable decision to brain their leader. I didn’t look away, and after a moment he blinked at me and shrugged.

“Grew tired of that crossbow one’s manners,” he explained. I rolled my eyes at him impatiently and returned my attention to the would-be citizen soldiers. Their leader was looking mighty suspicious with us, I noticed, so I talked fast.

“Right,” I said, “We’re grateful for the, uh, assistance, Master Bull –“

“John’s fine,” he interrupted.

“John. But, see, now we really need to get going, as we’ve urgent business to deal with elsewhere."

An urgent mess to clean up, I meant; the problem that now weighed on me was the letter I had sent off with the landlady of the inn, and the fact that the one who would hopefully receive it would be expecting to find us on the road to or within Crow’s Perch, not elsewhere chatting idly with a bunch of peasants. And didn’t I wish I could solve the trouble without more and worse catastrophe.

“What?” Bull was now scowling heavily. “But what about the meeting?”

“There _is_ no meeting,” Cozent growled from behind me. “You dumb hick. Fuck you and kindly clear off.” 

Bull, I will say, were not intimidated. A few of his constituents looked a little nervous, though, and as nervous civilians were notorious trigger-happy and several of ‘em held bows on us, I tried to move nice and slow as I waved Cozent down. 

“Fuck _you,_ ” Bull said back to Cozent, meanwhile.

“None of that,” I snapped. My tone put a precarious stop to the looming disaster. I kept talking, aware of the dozen or so eyes that were all now fixed on me.

“Look,” I said, “You wanna have a meeting? Sure. Here we go. My name’s Ves, these are Idler and Cozent. We’re Temerian partisans. We’ve a mind to kill that sergeant what used to work for the Bloody Baron. I imagine you would not be against it.”

Bull looked no less suspicious of us, but he nodded.

“Heard something about you,” he said. “From some of those that live in Mulbrydale.”

“Good? Good. Look, we expected to have these dead ones capture us and take us down to the fort, for to get close to the bastard and then kill him. Sort of an inside job, see?”

Nods from the crowd. I moved along quickly afore any of them got to thinking and spotted any of the largeish holes in my plan.

“Only all of you turned up and now that ain’t gonna work. So, here’s my thoughts. The lot of you take us prisoner instead, act like you captured us unawares and wish to collect on the bounty for rebel fighters. This ought to get us – all of us – into the fort. Then once Ardal appears into view, kill him and job’s done. Simple.”

John Bull slowly lowered his pickaxe; he considered very briefly and then, in a less antagonistic tone, “Sure. Then what?”

I pretended not to get his drift.

“Then what _what?_ ”

“Well,” he said, scratching his head in a way that could’ve been amusingly folksy save for the bloodstains on his hand, “Who takes over for Ardal? You?”

I laughed. Nobody else did, although I saw Idler smirk.

“Listen,” I said, hurriedly, “Time’s a-wasting here. At some point, some people somewhere are gonna start to wonder about what’s keeping these ones.” I nodded at the corpses all over the floor. “Do you really wanna argue politics now, or do you want to get Ardal out of the way while the going’s good?”

Bull looked around, took a quick survey of his crew. They for the most part nodded at him. He therefore also nodded, if reluctantly, as he turned back to me.

“Fine,” he said. “We’re in. Way I see it, you double-cross us, we can still turn you in for that bounty. We’ll leave when we’re done here.”

“Done? With what?”

“There ain’t really no refreshments,” Idler added, still smirking. Bull looked at him and put away his pickaxe.

“Done cleaning up this mess, in course. Can’t be leaving these here bodies for the landlady to deal with. The wife’d have my balls.”

He and the other peasants instantly set about looting the corpses. I sat there and breathed a very quiet sigh of relief as most of the atmosphere of brooding murder lifted. Cozent seemed to be feeling the same way; he leaned over and thumped my shoulder twice in a congratulatory manner. Even Idler had a genuine smile to direct toward me. I shoved down the uneasy feeling that were still sitting in my chest and regained my feet.

“We better help ‘em out,” I said. “Got no time to lose.”


	4. not quite a Ghost

Despite our assistance the sun was much lower in the sky by the time the corpses were sunk in the river with stones lashed to their ankles, the loot had been buried ‘neath a conspicuous white boulder in the woods, and sundry other tasks accomplished. There then was talk of wanting to wait to leave for Crow’s Perch until after the milking was done, but I stated that we’d neither time nor patience for cows and if at dark we were still in limbo the three of us would just leave and let the consequences be damned. This threat took, and finally we set off down the road, me and Idler and Cozent with our hands apparently tied behind us, marching in a circle of men bristling with farm tools (and our weapons.) We set a rapid pace for the group, despite ostensibly being the prisoners; I was growing worried about us being set on by any _real_ bandits who might be prowling when it grew dark. We arrived at the bridge leading up to the fort near sunset. The awkward conversation Cozent was fostering between himself and some of our escort died down for good as we were confronted by a pair of guards.

They regarded us with condescending glares as traditional between army and civilians. One asked what we wanted in a disgusted tone.

“Our due,” John Bull said, stepping worth with reasonable confidence. The two of us spent much of the walk rehearsing how we hoped the next few minutes of our lives would go. I watched him carefully; he were following the script so far. “Captured us some guerillas. Here for the reward.”

The guards didn’t look convinced. One squinted at the three of us and spat in the dirt.

“Uh-huh,” said the other. “I bet. How comes it that _you_ people managed to collar three partisans? Bet they’re just some goddamn chicken thieves you dressed up.”

Bull rolled his eyes at them.

“What, they not teach you to count? There’s ten of us and only three o’ them. Also,” he added significantly, “The one’s a woman, so..” 

I was shoved forward into easy view with, I though, more force than were needful. The two guards turned as one to stare at me.

“That she is,” the one said, slowly. “Good job noticing. Say, Jeb, weren’t there a woman on the wanted posters we go off the Nilfs?”

“Aye,” Jeb replied. “Vas, I think? Might could be this one. Might not. Not at all sure about them other two, though.”

“You gonna let us in or what?” Bull snapped, evidently growing as tired of the discussion as I was. Jeb’s partner sighed.

“Sure, whatever. Go on in. Worst can happen is you’re lying and maybe even then the boss’ll take a liking to your woman..”

We abruptly set off across the bridge, Bull in the lead. I cast a covert looked behind us toward the road that led north but saw nothing at all on it. Idler eyed me as I turned back again, raised his eyebrows, and said very quietly, “Don’t look good, do it?”

I made no reply. I knew I was taking a larger than usual risk without his input. Not that I was concerned with the fate of Ardal. He were not quite a ghost yet, but he was as good as. It was the trouble of making sure we didn’t go out with him that was bothering me (and Idler, Cozent; even John). I wasn’t sure that his goons would fight us if he were out of the picture. I wasn’t sure that they wouldn’t, either, though. I wasn’t sure that if they _did_ take offense to their leader’s assassination under their very noses, that any backup were coming, despite all my efforts to cover every possible outcome. The only thing I no doubts about was the farmers’ inability to survive a fight even with the shambling, over-fed, drunken wastrels that served as guards of the fort. If they attacked, it was curtains for us all.

A shiver therefore crawled up my spine despite the sultry evening heat as we passed into what seemed to be the inner bailey and the gate closed behind us. Armed men languished about the courtyard within in the long shadows; I watched Cozent and Idler glance about, counting them up. Their number was irrelevant for my concerns, tho’ I hoped they were more rather than less drunk already. We stood waiting in the courtyard between a partially burnt-down barn and the stairs to the main house, as John Bull had a discussion with some of them that went much the same as he’d had with the bridge guards. In time this wearisome event concluded and a man went to fetch “The Boss.” We waited, me growing more inwardly ansty by the moment. A few more guards were taking more than a passing interest in us.

Presently, Ardal was found and appeared through a door at the top of the stairs; he blinked dazedly at us and then descended. Bull stepped slightly aside and to the right as he came down, as we’d discussed earlier, in order that I should have a clear shot. I squinted at Ardal curiously. There seemed to be nothing particular about him to differentiate him from his men, save maybe for his exceptional state of personal filthiness and drunkenness.

He stopped before reaching the ground to regard us. Well, me, mostly. After a moment, he announced, “Oh, aye. I seen this one before, at Dol Blathana, at the end of the war. Well, too bad you ain’t got her commanding officer as well, but we can’t have everything we want. The Nilfs’ll have to be happy with what they’ll get. In due time,” he added, with an unpleasant smirk. I made eye contact with Bull, who interrupted Ardal.

“What about our money?” he demanded, with enough moral authority to redirect the man’s attention his way. I quickly unwound the rope around my wrists and cast a look around for the farmer which had custody of my crossbow; he jumped to action in a most conspicuous manner and tried to hand it to me business end first. As I were pushing it out of my face so as to relieve him of it before he shot _me_ , I heard Ardal say, “I tell you you’ll get nothing from me. Go ask the fucking Black Ones for your bounty.”

When I turned around, finally armed after a struggle that had taken only a few seconds but which felt like it had dragged on much too long, I found that Cozent had stepped himself in between me and the sight of Ardal or his guards. He moved rapidly as I gave him a shove, which revealed John Bull seizing the front of Ardal’s filthy collar to keep him from turning around and looking my way. His guards were all fixated on the action. Bull dealt Ardal a punch to the nose and released him. I set my feet in the same moment, breathed in, aimed at the target ten yards in front of me, and fired. All noise in the yard instantly ceased.

Not for long, though. I heard Idler and Cozent loudly harrying the gawking farmers into defensive stances as I reloaded, staring at Ardal’s corpse. He’d fallen into the dusty ground with my bolt sticking out of his right eye; he’d turned his head as I’d fired, and that were just how things had turned out. I breathed out and didn’t dwell on my triumph; it was no time to let the shocked gaggle of guards collect themselves. No congratulations were forthcoming anyway. John Bull joined the group, now holding his mining tool at the ready.

“Fuck,” said one of the guards. “What now?”

I drew down on him. He blinked stupidly back at me, nose bleeding in a light trickle, and made no effort toward self-preservation. None of the other guards seemed to be in any more order than he was; they all sat or stood exactly where they’d been when we arrived, the same stupid looks fixed on their faces. John Bull’s heavy voice echoed off the walls around us.

“What happens now is next man to touch a weapon gets the same as Ardal,” he announced. "Lads, get to it.”

The band of farmers moved through, disarming men who looked as though nothing more confusing had ever happened to them. When asked, one allowed as there was nobody in the house, which I doubted; Cozent therefore took up a position at the top of the steps by the door. As he ascended, one of the children who had been brought along as militia members asked, from across the yard, “What’s all this powder here?”

Idler ceased herding the guards into a group where I could cover all of them at once and strode over to the table the boy was looking down at. “Fisstech,” he replied, and overturned table and contents. He ground the drug into the dirt with his boots. The kid watched him, eyes wide.

“That explains a few things,” I commented, scowling at our prisoners. None of them looked my way. A few seemed to be nearly asleep. One made a noise of protest at Idler, who replied with a rude gesture. I breathed my second sigh of relief for the day and lowered my weapon as the last of what had been Ardal’s men were tied hand and foot.

“Think that went rather well,” Bull remarked to me. Too soon.


	5. how to Succeed but still Fail

As soon as the words died on the sullen air, a strange noise drifted to our ears. Cozent cocked his head like a confused dog, listening to it out of his remaining ear. I myself frowned dubiously skyward. After a too-long pause a shout came clearly to our us, and what was without a doubt the noise of metal striking metal. At this, several of us sprung into action. Most of the farmers stayed put, gawking. Me and Idler, however, raced to take up positions on either side of the closed gate, leaning against the brick walls. John Bull kicked a few of his would-be militia into sort of a defensive position at the bottom of the stairs. Cozent, still guarding the house door, contributed a pointed figure and a command to “Guard them prisoners like they’re your prize fucking cow, do you hear?”

Not, I considered as the sounds of battle drew closer, that the prisoners were in any state of mind to suddenly rise up against us. Roche would nevertheless probably have killed them all rather than risk it. I felt as thought I were nearing my quota of murder for the day and didn’t suggest it. In not much time, all went silent beyond the gate. Someone stepped up to it and gave it an experimental push; it of course opened the other way, but, as it weren’t locked, it was simple enough for whoever it was beyond to change tactics. I stared across at Idler as it creaked slowly open. Nobody came through.

A long few minutes passed in total silence. Idler shook his head at my questioning face and shrugged. I swore to myself and then shouted, irritably, “Who’s there?”

“Ves?” said a distinctly familiar voice from beyond.

I frowned at Idler, then asked, hesitant, “Yes?"

Nothing followed, but I felt fairly sure of myself; I stepped out into the empty gateway with my hands up. Behind the frame opposite to where Idler still waited at the ready crouched Vernon Roche, a dozen or so commandos, and – my heart sort of stopped and started again – Tamara Strenger. Our eyes met. She frowned a little. I instantly looked away guiltily. Roche was looking at us but gave no sign about whether he’d noticed our brief communication. He turned and waved his men off as I did the same to mine.

Idler blinked stupidly and saluted. Cozent, at the top of the stairs, stood open-mouthed. I myself focused on not looking at Tamara as the Commander led the way into the courtyard. Roche quickly took stock of the prisoners, the farmers, and Ardal’s body; he dealt this last a not-very-light kick, muttered something under his breath, and then said briskly to Tamara, “Well. Congratulations on your inheritance.”

“What?” she asked.

Bull had been opening his mouth, probably to ask what the hell was going on. He closed it again and looked my way. He were only following Roche’s somewhat aggravated lead, though, as did all else in the courtyard, save for several of the prisoners who were nodding off. I stood, thankful that it was now dark enough that my steadily reddening face wouldn’t be easy to see. Nothing came to me, if I was supposed to say something to them all; I just stood there instead looking blank.

“Excuse me,” Bull finally said. “What the hell is going on?”

I jumped to the answer, in hope of getting some of the heat off myself.

“This is Vernon Roche, my commander,” I said. “And Tamara Strenger. She’s-“

“I know who she is,” said he. “She once saved my little nephew’s life when he were ill. If she’s to be the new Baron, you won’t hear no disagreement from me.”

“John Bull,” he added to Tamara, who had gone red and then very white. “I’m the captain of the militia, here.”

Roche cast a slow, disdainful look across the gaggle of farmers and their dozing prisoners. Tamara stared at me pointedly. I tried not to fidget guiltily and to come up with something else to say. I failed.

“Why don’t we talk inside the house,” the Commander eventually said.

“Which it ain’t been cleared yet,” Cozent instantly announced. “Sir.”

“The barn, then.”

It had been phrased like a suggestion, but it wasn’t one. None of us apparently had any mind to argue anyhow; we – me, Tamara, and, looking like he wasn’t sure if he were invited or not, John Bull – trooped after him into the half-ruined structure. Inside it was as hot as in the yard, but at least there was no crowd of overly interested onlookers. Once we were well inside, Roche delivered another non-suggestion:

“Why don’t you start us off at the beginning, Ves?”

Which I did, starting at my conversation some days before with the woman in Midcopse, for Bull’s benefit, then touching on my conversation with Tamara. I left out, of course, the personal details, but as she looked out at the evening sky through a hole in the wall which had once been a door, Roche glanced again from me to her and his eyes narrowed. What he guessed I don’t doubt, nor did I look forward to explaining how and, doubtless, _why_ I’d kept my assignations with her a secret from him. I quickly carried on to how it was that we’d ended up there in Crow’s Perch, in company of John Bull’s amateurs, that evening:

My intention had always been to draw Ardal and his men in by putting out the fliers, as I had told Bull earlier that day. Of course it had worked, although not the way I’d hoped it might; my change of plans to include him and his militia (here, a flash of undisguised scorn on Roche’s face) had been made on the fly. I privately were rather pleased with how that had all gone down, as everyone was still alive and well, although of course I knew there we had gotten lucky.

“Wasn’t aware that the garrison had all taken up fisstech as a hobby,” I said, as an attempt at lightening the mood. Nobody seemed interested in levity. I moved along to the letter I had sent by way of the landlady of the Inn at the Crossroads, which were addressed (in care of our fishing-boat captain) to Tamara and had been apparently delivered as planned. We often, I explained for her and Bull, employed the fisherman to pass written messages back and forth and to get in and out of Oxenfurt and sometimes Novigrad, on account of his intense patriotism and total illiteracy. Anyway, clearly she had received the note and taken what it said, which were that I and some others were in Crow’s Perch and needed a rescue, to heart.

I paused here and glanced her way. She continued staring outside, back turned. I winced and hurriedly described the scrap we’d had within the tavern and then the deal I’d made with Bull and our arrival in the fort.

“Which I then shot Ardal,” I finished. “And then all of you turned up.”

I’d thought being modest about my achievement was for the best, under the circumstances. An unpleasant silence followed my speech; I could hear an owl hooting somewhere in the ruined building and nothing much else. It grew quite dark within the barn. At some length, Bull cleared his throat.

“Suppose I can see now how all this happened,” he said, deferentially, to Roche. “What I don’t figure is how it is you ended up here. Sir.”

“A happy accident,” Roche said. I promptly assumed it was nothing of the kind. He was in a quietly furious mood and so I kept this opinion to myself. “We met Strenger here on the road to Crow’s Perch, all alone. We were headed elsewhere, but when she told us – eventually – what she was up to, we diverted to deal with this instead.”

“It’s true,” Tamara said, unexpectedly. Roche accepted this interruption with uncharacteristic magnanimity. I had, personally, expected she would have brought some kind of backup; the witch hunters, presumably. Obviously I had been wrong, which made me wonder what the hell she had been thinking of, but there it was. I wasn’t about be to accusing people of doing things that made no sense. Also, Roche had more to say and I suspected me speaking up would be answered with far less benevolence.

“In any case, _since_ we’re here, we should talk business,” he continued. “The way I see it, you have the only somewhat legal claim to this place. We’re prepared to support you – militarily to a point, and otherwise, as much as we can – should you take up the seat here. So, I suspect, will the Nilfgaardians; they don’t much care who rules so long as their supplies keep coming. Which they will, with us on your side.”

“Reckon the local aldermen would be right pleased to do the same,” added John Bull, “As we all know you’re a right one, not like them brigands as took over from your father. You do right by us, and we’ll do the same by you. If you’ll agree to serve. Or rule, is what I meant.”

I said nothing at all; this part of my grand plan at least was working out. Better than I expected, even. Roche, in course, had already agreed (in theory) to this portion of it before I even set out, but having Bull around to speak for the common everyman were more than I hoped for. I’d reckoned getting Tamara out of Oxenfurt and back into the real world would have something of an effect, too; it had really been the only tricky part. The trouble was I’d had to pretend I were in more than the usual daily amount of danger to make that happen, and so I kept my trap shut and lurked in the background. The darkness within the barn luckily put me mostly out of sight, as well as, I could only hope, out of mind.

Bull looked moderately hopeful. Roche stared steadily at where Tamara were still standing looking outside. I suddenly found something interesting to look at on the dirty floor as she finally turned slowly around. I therefore didn’t see how she looked as she said, “Fine! Fine. Not giving me much of a choice, are you? I’ll do it. Now will you _please_ go away for a few minutes?”

I looked back up to see Roche and Bull exchange a significant glance. Roche jerked his head toward the gaping hole in the barn wall where we’d entered; they both strode past Tamara and out of it without another word. I planned let them get a little ahead afore I tried to follow, because I had been somewhat deeper in the barn than them and I were hoping I could stay out of mind for a few more moments. As soon as I took a step toward leaving, Tamara suddenly said, “Ves. Wait.”

I stopped dead. The moon had risen. She didn’t come any closer than where she’d been; I could see her, a few feet away, standing in the square of light it made on the ground. I thought maybe she was about to cry. I tried adopting the expression I normally wore when Roche were mad at me, but it didn’t stick on so well, so I returned to looking at the ground instead.

“You tricked me,” Tamara said, in time. Her voice sounded steady enough. “You pretended to be in danger because you knew it’d drag me back out into all _this_. Why?”

I sighed.

“Because,” I said, raising my eyes from the floor, “All these people – John Bull, and his shitty militia, and all – they need help. Real help, and _not_ from someone like me. They can’t keep themselves and their families safe unless they got someone up here in this shitty fort who actually cares about them, whether or not they take up waving farm tools and pretending they’re soldiers. You told me you joined them witch hunters because you felt like you was doing some good in the world but the people out here is who needs your help, not them. I tried to tell you all this before but you wouldn’t hear it. So, yes, I tricked you. I’m sorry I done it, but I’m not sorry it worked.”

I ran out of words and stopped talking, a little out of breath. Tamara studied me for a long few seconds. The sound of an angry voice shouting orders drifted in through the opening in the wall behind me, accompanied by a rumble of distant thunder, as if to remind me that after this discussion I could look forward to another of the same sort with Roche. I found myself blinking back frustrated tears.

“Oh,” Tamara said finally. Whatever that meant. She took a step toward me and then stopped, twisting her hands together, and then added, “I see.”

After a deep breath, she found something coherent to say.

“I don’t think it’s going to work between us, Ves,” she told me. “You lied to me; I know you had _good reasons_ ” – a hint of bitterness, here – “But you still did it. You might not know this, because maybe nobody ever told you: people aren’t supposed to treat people that – that they love – like that.”

I rubbed my eyes, a little angrily. My head felt as stuffy as the air in that barn. All I could think of to reply was “Oh.” Tamara waited a long moment, apparently expecting something else, but nothing else came.

“I’m sorry, Ves,” she added. “About – about whatever.”

After another long pause in which I failed to come up with anything to say, she took a few steps in my direction. I looked up and she motioned toward the hole in the wall.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I have to go deal with –“

Vernon Roche’s dulcet tones reached us again, criticizing someone’s failure to move quickly enough for his preference.

“- with that.”

I awkwardly shrugged; she grabbed my hand, squeezed it once, and walked out. It was a while before I was ready to follow. In fact, it was seemingly quite a while, because Idler came looking for me.

“Commander sent me to see if you was dead and if so I was to leave you here, but as you aren’t he wants that you and me and Cozent would clear the main building as we are the only real soldiers present – are you alright?”

He squinted curiously at me; I had been sitting on the rickety remains of a bench, head in my hands. I looked up into his worried face, wiped my eyes again, and said, “Yes. No. Not really. Let’s go.” 


	6. an Evening in Crow's Perch

Cozent, Idler, and I entered the door at the top of the stairs. Within it was even hotter than outside in the courtyard, where at last a faint breeze had finally stirred itself. The door closed behind us and we stood in the pitch dark for a few seconds until Idler struck a match and put it to the wick of a candle that sat on a bench beside us. We were at the end of a short narrow hallway. Some dirty rags and other trash lay here and there on the floor. I wrinkled my nose at the stench that these put off and indicated we should move along with a motion of my hand. We went on in silence, making our way through a series of filthy and reeking but vacant bedrooms; the furniture within was well-used, but it appeared as though nobody had cleaned in some months. As we exited the last of the rooms, Cozent said, “Looks like this place weren’t so bad, once. Seen better days, though. Look, I found this.”

He held out another candle, in a stick covered in gold leaf. We lit this, as well.

“Let’s get down the stairs,” I said. “Stay sharp.”

I’d tried to sound authoritative, but something in my voice wasn’t quite right; Idler looked at me curiously but he said nothing about it. We went on down. The next floor down had windows, luckily, and was therefore less oppressively airless than the one above.

“Ain’t nothing here, either,” Cozent said, continuing his habit of chatting when it wasn’t called for. We walked through a kitchen and some associated storerooms. Mice scurried out of our way. Also, roaches. Thunder rumbled again outside. Idler opened a cupboard and slammed it closed again, swearing.

“Spiders,” he explained.

The final level was just as filthy as the others, but more remarkable. It was a vast basement, and it reeked strongly of stale beer and a stench that I instantly recognized was rotting meat. The source of this were three very dead persons that had been left on the cellar floor, inside a section where huge barrels had been stored. One of these dripped from a poorly applied tap. A mix of old blood and beer was pooled due to this; dried in parts, still liquid in others. We paused to stare at this grisly scene in the light of the candles. Idler pulled the collar of his shirt up over his nose. Cozent shook himself once like he had a chill and then moved on toward the darkness beyond the barrels.

I privately wished I could have done either of those things, but instead I put on a stoic face and crouched over the bodies. I reckoned they were at least a week old. As I looked closer, I noticed some other things. The lockjawed grin frozen on every one of their faces, for instance.

“These are Nilfs,” I noted. One twisted corpse sported a now very stretched tattoo I recognized as being from a brigade I was familiar with. “Seems our man Ardal had some interesting business going on here. No marks on the bodies; I figure they were poisoned. Arsenic, maybe.”

Cozent returned from his tour of the rest of the basement. “Nothing here other than those,” he reported, “Aside from there’s a door back there which is locked. I think I could break it down, were it necessary.”

I stood up, lightheaded from the smell.

“Sure. May as well be thorough.”

Cozent took his axe to the lock on the door and had it open in no time. Beyond we found a strange sort of altar that someone had set up in what looked like it were once a closet. Flames were painted on the walls behind it. I had a good idea as to who it was had done this and spent time there, but, when Idler coarsely asked what the devil this crap was in a muffled voice, I only shrugged.

"No clue," I lied. “Let’s get out of here. This place is..”

Words failed me. We abandoned the reeking basement without any more discussion and stood in the relatively cleaner air of the kitchen. Cozent stomped away up the stairs to report all was clear, and me and Idler stood about in silence for a while. Idler was clearly thinking something over. Eventually he noted, “You seem upset. Wanna talk about it?”

I considered him. Lighting lit up the room in a series of blinding flashes. His wore a more than usually brooding expression, and, when I didn’t say anything after the corresponding crash of thunder, he added, “You got soot on your face. Just there.”

He pointed to his own cheek. I rubbed at the spot on my own face to clear the smear off and, as more thunder rumbled and so did the sound of boots on the floor over our heads, said, “Maybe later.”

My report to Roche was received with a nod and a thoughtful look. When I finished, he stepped on a roach, glanced toward the stairs leading down to the cellar, and shrugged at Tamara. She had apparently decided to pretend we didn’t know each other, which were probably for the best.

“Well, welcome home,” Roche said. She stared around at the vermin-filled room in disgust. I felt much the same; it were going to take a stiff drink to even begin to clear the faint flavor of corpse and beer out of the back of my throat, and who knew what would be necessary to get it out of my clothes. Unfortunately, it seemed as if nobody was in a hurry to leave for a place where I could acquire said drink. Instead, Tamara and Roche began a disagreement over what to do with both the Nilf corpses and also the prisoners they still had outside in the rain that was now coming down hard. This went in circles for a bit; Roche favored hanging the latter and burning the former, and Tamara preferred a trial for the one and an investigation of the other. I moved closer to a window, where at least some clean air was blowing in. Eventually a bargain of sorts was reached. It were decided that the final resolution to the problems could wait until morning, and, meanwhile, as for where to hold the remainder of Ardal’s men..

Roche stood by as Bull’s militia herded them into the basement, and then he shut the door and locked it. 

After a short but deeply unpleasant night spent attempting to sleep in the kitchen, we fetched them out again and departed before dawn. John Bull and his militia stayed behind with Tamara; Roche offered her some parting advice about having the garrison come deal with the corpses in the basement, as, he said, they’d be wondering where they were anyway and it would serve to make a good first impression. I ventured a glance back as we left the fort and saw the whole pack of them glumly watching us leave like so many abandoned children. Light rain fell as we drove the prisoners, who Roche agreed to take, down the same road that, the day before, me and Cozent and Idler had likewise been escorted along. However, we had been much less foul than these; most showed sign of the sickness that people get when they come off fisstech, and those that didn’t yet were in no good shape after their night spent locked up with the dead.

As dawn broke behind the clouds, Roche called a halt to the march, lined ‘em all up in front of a ditch that bordered a particularly thick part of the wood, and nodded to us. I took no part in the demise of the last of Ardal’s men, as I felt I had done enough by killing their sergeant, but I did lend my crossbow to Cozent, who fired it off with a savage satisfaction on his face.

As he tossed it back to me, Roche said, casually, “There. That should satisfy any remaining debt to your woman in Midcopse’s sister. March on ahead,” he told the others.

We trailed a dozen yards behind the rest of the group, side by side. I waited patiently for Roche to decide where I were to start explaining myself, or else to just yell at me without bothering. This was, apparently, not his intention. He eyed me sideways and asked, instead, “You alright?”

I of course nodded.

“Not what I heard from Idler Greene,” he said. I made a mental note to later ask Idler what he were thinking of by bringing the Commander into things, but, on the other hand, my unhappiness was maybe so obvious that Roche would have figured it out on his own anyway. I sighed, ran a hand through my wet hair, and shrugged. I told him it’d been a busy few days and I was tired. Then I added, on some strange whim, “Don’t think Tamara likes my methods much.”

“Ah,” he said, as if that explained it for him. “Well. Most people wouldn’t, you know.”

I did know. This did not make me feel any better. I told him this fact, at which point he stopped dead and looked me in the eye. Whatever he saw there seemed to satisfy him. We walked on.

“You did right, Ves,” he told me. “It isn’t often easy to do right, but it’s good to know you always try anyway.”

“Even,” he added, frowning, “When I’d rather you wouldn’t.”

I caught a smile on his face when I looked over at him. We walked the rest of the way back together.


	7. in Conclusion

When I finally got a chance to tell Idler and Cozent the whole tale, it was gone dark again. We sat and poured each other drinks from a bottle of vodka which Cozent had got somewhere, and I delivered the entire thing to them, with, finally, no detail left out. After I were done, Idler seemed thoughtful but Cozent just laughed and poured us both another shot. 

“That girl came it pretty high and mighty,” he commented, drinking his. I sat and held mine, then downed it as it appeared he had more to say and I felt I needed it. “Least, that’s how I see it. Them nobles ain’t like you and me, is what I say. You’re better off with us than with her. Right, Idler?”

Idler didn’t reply.

“Well, all’s well that ended well anyway,” Cozent finished, not minding. “Excuse me.”

He rose abruptly and lurched away into the night. I dealt myself another shot and regarded Idler; he looked back at me wearily, dark eyes reflecting the candle, and, as I raised both eyebrows at him questioningly, said, “I got nothing much to say, really. Maybe Cozent’s right. Although maybe that girl we left in the fort ain’t all wrong. Don’t see it matters which, really. How do _you_ feel about it?”

“Like shit,” I said, “But it’s getting better.”

He nodded encouragingly and raised his cup to me; I tipped mine his way in return.

“Drink up,” he told me, “And things’ll look better in no time.”

I did. He was right.


End file.
